Deliberately provocative?

The Committee for Ex-Muslims promises to campaign for freedom of religion but has already upset the Islamic and political Establishments for stirring tensions among the million-strong Muslim community in the Netherlands…Similar organisations campaigning for reform of the religion have sprung up across Europe and representatives from Britain and Germany will join the launch in The Hague today. “Sharia schools say that they will kill the ones who leave Islam. In the West people get threatened, thrown out of their family, beaten up,” Mr Jami said. “In Islam you are born Muslim. You do not even choose to be Muslim. We want that to change, so that people are free to choose who they want to be and what they want to believe in.”

That seems fair, doesn’t it? That people should be able to choose what if any religion they believe in and what they don’t? It seems fair to me.

I wonder if it seems fair to the reporter (David Charter). He says some odd things…

The threats are taken seriously after the murder in 2002 of Pim Fortuyn, an antiimmigration politician, and in 2004 of Theo Van Gogh, an antiIslam film-maker…Jami…denied that the choice of September 11 was deliberately provocative towards the Islamic Establishment.

It’s pretty tendentious to call Van Gogh ‘an antiIslam film-maker.’ And what is ‘the Islamic Establishment’? Why is it capitalized? Why is David Charter worried about putative provocations to it? Why does he ask a question that seems to imply that if there is an Islamic Establishment, it ought not to be ‘provoked’ by suggestions that people should be free to leave a religion? Why does he think it provocative, and deliberately provocative at that, to remind this Establishment of September 11? Why does he seem slightly hostile and suspicious toward Jami instead of toward this apparently quite touchy and coercive ‘Islamic Establishment’?

Maybe it’s just good skeptical journalism, but some of the wording does seem a little…warped.

11 Responses to “Deliberately provocative?”

Thanks for pointing out the “antiIslam” comment – I missed that. My attention was caught by the seeming implication that Fortuyn was murdered by Muslim extremists, when in fact he was assassinated by a white, Dutch, non-Muslim animal rights activist… It’s not the first time, and probably not the last, that Fortuyn’s death will seemingly be attributed to Muslim extremism…

“Ehsan Jami, the committee’s founder, who rejected Islam after the attack on the twin towers in 2001”

I wish Eshan the best of luck. I hope he keeps hail and hearthy and in good spirits, now that he is in hiding. He is very brave indeed.

The eleventh of Sept has once again passed. It is obviously a very painful time for all Americans. Perhaps it is too painful for people to even mention the atrocity that occurred on that most fateful day. A day that threatened forever the mindset of America.

M-T O’L — This is the United States of Amnesia. Six years elsewhere is like 30 years here. Apart from people who were directly affected, the events of 9/11 are already fading away. Unfortunately, that’s not true of the ongoing nightmare of the Bush presidency.

Bill C did good work on the Irish peace process – I’m not surprised the Irish in general are fond of the Clintons! (It’s depressing to compare the diplomatic skills of Bill C with the current occupant of the office. Impossible to imagine The Decider doing what Bill C did in Northern Ireland.)

O.B.I agree 100% Clinton was crucial in the N.I. peace agreement, what realy made the differance was that Clinton understood the Ulster prodestants as well as the catholics(probably because he was from Ulster prodestant roots and had lived in the U.K)so he was able to steer his way through N.I. polotics without upsetting the relevant partys, the use of George Mitchell was another master stroke,he tip toed through the mine field with the patience of a saint. Apart from that though I think Clinton was a disaster for the American left,he put them in the position of having to defend his indefencible behaviour in the Lewinski affair leaving Gore to suffer the concequences.

I have great regard for John Hume. I even got his autograph. He was slightly hesitant at first when I asked him, but his face suddenly lit up, when upon asking me my name, and I duly replied, – Marie-Therese. He then gleefully said, “I have a daughter with the same name” This occurred from across the road in Kildare St, Dublin where Bram Stoker’s original abode is situated.

Scion of traitors and warlords. Why Bush is coy about his Irish roots. Local historians in Wexford have discovered that George Bush is a descendant of a long line of Scots Irish presidents including Woodrow Wilson,

Unfortunately Marie John Hume and David Trimble seem to have been the loosers in political terms,maybe that is the price you have to pay to make peace but it just seems sad that I.R.A. Martin and Paisley seem to have gained the most.

An unexpected partner in the guise of David Trimble joined the peace process in 1995 when the mainstream Unionist Party, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), chose a new leader. His hard-line reputation suggested that he intended to draw the Party away from any agreement with other parties in Northern Ireland, and from any contact with the Irish government. To the dismay of his followers, he agreed to meet with John Hume, and with leaders of the major parties in Ireland. I remember watching on telly, U2 singer Bono, David Trimble and John Hume celebrating victory in the island-wide referendum on the Northern Ireland peace agreement, May 19, 1998. Nobody in Eire in general had ever expected this kind of scenario to occur.

It was also for both of them a massive achievement in receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. However long it will take for a genuinely lasting peace in Northern Ireland nobody really knows. But if it does last it will surely be in the shape that was envisioned by these brave men. History indeed will be kind to both men. I do not think they are losers. I am posting here on a neutral basis. I never thought I would live to see the day when Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams would even sit together in the same room for any length of time, let alone SHAKE HANDS with each other. That is something short of a miracle. Yes, a week is a long time in politics. Politicians come and go, and change inevitably takes place. Dynamics change the political landscapes and the electorate have to accept/not accept those who were chosen on a democratic level. Whether we lick or like them, at all. One has to put up with the status quo unless one fights hard enough to fight for change. Sinn Fein did not do very well in the recent elections in Eire. That is obviously going to have a fall-out affect on the North. It was to the surprise of everyone. But then the same applies to the other parties such as Labour, Fine Gael, and the PD’s, the last mentioned of whom was almost wiped out. They all now have time to regroup, get their policies in order and who knows what the next election brings. Ian Paisley, I believe is being dropped as Leader. See: Timeline: Northern Ireland Assembly.